List of George Washington University faculty

The George Washington University
Motto	Latin: Deus Nobis Fiducia
Motto in English	God is Our Trust
Type	Private
Established	February 9, 1821
President	Ellen Granberg
Faculty	2,663
Students	24,531
Location	Washington, D.C.
Campus	Urban (Foggy Bottom) ; Suburban (Mount Vernon and Virginia campuses);
Colors	Buff and blue ;
Website	www.gwu.edu

This is a list of notable George Washington University faculty, including both current and past faculty at the Washington, D.C. school, as well as university officials. As of 2007, George Washington University employs approximately 1,130 full-time, in addition to part-time, faculty members across its three campuses.^[2] Presidents John Quincy Adams and Ulysses Grant served on the board of trustees. Professors have been government officials, leading scientists, and others. Edward Teller, a physicist considered the father of the hydrogen bomb, taught at GW. Frank Sesno, a CNN Special Correspondent, currently teaches in that field and, from 2009 to 2020, was the director of the School of Media and Public Affairs. The current president of the university is Ellen Granberg.

Current faculty

Business

Herman Aguinis – Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Management, and Past President of the Academy of Management
Hossein Askari – professor of international business
Annamaria Lusardi – university professor of economics & accountancy
Stuart Umpleby – professor emeritus in the Department of Management
Sandiaga Uno – Distinguished Research Professor in Residence in the School of Business,^[3] Deputy Governor of Jakarta
Shaista Khilji – founding editor-in-chief of the South Asia Journal of Business Studies
Joseph Pelzman – professor of economics and author of the 2025 Donald Trump Gaza Strip takeover proposal^[4]
Anthony Yezer – professor of economics
Otaviano Canuto – former vice president and executive director at the World Bank
Stephen C. Smith – professor of economics and international affairs
Graciela Kaminsky – professor of economics
James Foster – board member for the World Bank

Humanities

Peter Caws – professor of philosophy
Seyyed Hossein Nasr – founder and first president of the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, scholar of comparative religion
Jane Shore – poet
Alison S. Brooks – professor of anthropology
Michael J. Marquardt – senior advisor for United Nations Staff College and president of the World Institute for Action Learning
Eric H. Cline – professor of archaeology
Marie Price – professor of geography and the first female president of the American Geographical Society
Bernard Wood – professor of human origins and author of proposal of Homo rudolfensis
Roy Richard Grinker – editor-in-chief of Anthropological Quarterly

Selected faculty

United States Attorney General Eric Holder served on the Board of Trustees.

Senator Lowell P. Weicker Jr. is a former law professor.

A nuclear physicist, Edward Teller was the father of the hydrogen bomb.

Hossein Nasr, University Professor of Islamic studies, is a leading Iranian Islamic philosopher.

John Quincy Adams, President of the United States, served on the Board of Trustees in 1832.

President Ulysses Grant served as an honorary trustee from 1869 to 1877. His grandson was also a trustee.

International affairs

Michael Barnett – university professor and leading Constructivist scholar
Nathan J. Brown – former director of the Institute for Middle East Studies
Amitai Etzioni – former president of the American Sociological Association
Martha Finnemore – leader of the constructivist school of international relations theory
Leon Fuerth – former National Security Adviser to Vice President Al Gore
Edward "Skip" Gnehm – former U.S. Ambassador to Jordan, Kuwait and Australia
Karl Inderfurth – former Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs
Marc Lynch – director of the Institute for Middle East Studies, coined the term Arab Spring
Thomas E. McNamara – former Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs
Eric Newsom – former Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs
Scott Pace – director of the Space Policy Institute and former Executive Secretary of the National Space Council during the first Trump Administration
Lawrence Wilkerson – former Chief of Staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell
Gordon Gray III – former US Ambassador to Tunisia
Michael E. Brown – former senior fellow at International Institute for Strategic Studies and former co-editor of International Security
Barry Chiswick – former senior staff economist at the Council of Economic Advisers
Arie M. Dubnov – professor of Israel studies
Gerónimo Gutiérrez Fernández – former Mexican Ambassador to the United States
Charles L. Glaser – professor of political science and international affairs
James Hershberg – former director of the Cold War International History Project
Bonnie Jenkins – 18th Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security
Matthew Levinger – former senior program officer at United States Institute of Peace
Robert Litwak – former vice president and director of international security studies at Wilson Center and former director for nonproliferation on the National Security Council during the first Clinton Administration
Cynthia McClintock – member of the Center for International Policy's board of directors and former president of the Latin American Studies Association
Harris Mylonas – lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the editor-in-chief for the Nationalities Papers
John Nagl – former president of the Center for a New American Security
Henry R. Nau – senior staff member of the National Security Council during the Reagan Administration
Deepa M. Ollapally – former director of the South Asia program at the United States Institute of Peace
Walter Reich – Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Professor of International Affairs, Ethics and Human Behavior and former director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Nilofar Sakhi – former chief executive and executive director at the American University of Afghanistan
David Shambaugh – member of the Council on Foreign Relations and United States National Security Council staff during the Carter Administration
Jay Shambaugh – former Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs during the Biden Administration
David H. Shinn – diplomat
Barbara Slavin – former director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council
William B. Taylor Jr. – 6th United States ambassador to Ukraine and chargé d'affaires for Ukraine under the Trump administration

Journalism and public affairs

Dana Perino – former White House Press Secretary in the George W. Bush Administration
Steven V. Roberts – journalist, writer, and commentator
Frank Sesno – CNN correspondent
Robert Entman – professor of media and public affairs

Law

Steve Charnovitz – professor of law, member of the Council on Foreign Relations
Spencer Overton – professor of law, former U.S. Attorney, top bundler for Barack Obama, member of President-elect Obama's Justice Department Review Team
Jeffrey Rosen – professor of law, legal editor at The New Republic
Clarence Thomas – current Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States^[5]
Jonathan Turley – Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law and frequent guest on news programs

Mathematics

John B. Conway – professor of mathematics

Medicine

Francois Boller – clinical professor of neurology
Paul Brindley – Professor of Microbiology, Immunology, and Tropical Medicine
William DeVries – first surgeon to perform a successful permanent artificial heart implantation
Vanessa Northington Gamble – University Professor, chaired the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Legacy Committee under then-President Bill Clinton
Ferid Murad – University Professor, Nobel Laureate
Richard Restak – clinical professor of neurology
Ami Zota – associate professor at George Washington University Milken School of Public Health^[6]
Mary Ellsberg – former vice president for research and programs at the International Center for Research on Women

Political management

Mark Kennedy – business executive, congressman, presidential appointee, introduced shapeholders to business strategy

Public policy and public administration

Edward Berkowitz – historian and presidential adviser
Kathryn Newcomer – author and academic
Marcus Raskin – social critic and activist
Christopher H. Sterling – media historian
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg – President Emeritus of George Washington University

Sciences

Pascale Ehrenfreund – first woman president of the Austrian Science Fund and former president and chancellor of the International Space University
Lisa Bowleg – professor of applied social psychology
Christopher Mores – virologist
Valerie Hu – professor of biochemistry and molecular biology
David Alan Grier – former president of the Computer Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Past faculty

Moudud Ahmed – former prime minister of Bangladesh
Ruth Aaronson Bari – mathematician known for her work in graph theory and homomorphisms
Stephen Biddle – scholar and author on U.S. defense strategy
Chrystelle Trump Bond – former lecturer of dance, choreographer, dance historian, and author
David Josiah Brewer – former Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
Letitia Woods Brown (1971–1976) – historian
Judith Butler – former professor of philosophy
Thomas Buergenthal – former professor of international and comparative law and jurisprudence, formerly the American judge on the International Court of Justice
Robert J. Callahan – current ambassador to Nicaragua, former SMPA professor
Vikram Chandra – author of Sacred Games and winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize
Nathaniel C. Comfort – former researcher in the Department of History
William J. Crowe – former professor of international affairs, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom
Thomas J. Dodd Jr. – former adjunct professor, former United States Ambassador to Uruguay and to Costa Rica
Waldemar J. Gallman – former United States Ambassador to Iraq and United States Ambassador to Poland
George Gamow (1934–1954) – physicist and cosmologist
Gregory G. Garre – law professor, former United States Solicitor General
Alan Grayson – lecturer in Government Contracts Program, former member of the U.S. House of Representatives
John Marshall Harlan – former Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
Howard Lincoln Hodgkins – university president, 1921–1923
Cecil Jacobson – rogue fertility doctor^[7]
Edward P. Jones – Pulitzer Prize-winning author
Albert Freeman Africanus King – professor of obstetrics
Christopher Kojm – chairman of the National Intelligence Council
William Kovacic – chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, former professor of government contracts law
S. M. Krishna – current Minister of External Affairs of India
Ken Lay – former assistant professor, former chairman and CEO of Enron
Joseph LeBaron – former Elliott School faculty, current ambassador to Qatar, former ambassador to Mauritania
Blake R. Van Leer – president of Georgia Tech, U.S. Army colonel, inventor, and civil rights advocate
John Logsdon – former member of Columbia Accident Investigation Board, NASA Advisory Council
William H. Luers – former visiting lecturer, former ambassador to Venezuela, to Czechoslovakia
Michelle McMurry-Heath – Immunologist and former CEO of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization
Josiah Meigs – professor of experimental philosophy in the early 19th century
William Matthew Merrick – former congressman from Maryland, former professor of law
Andrew A. Michta
John Miller – former congressman from Washington
Charles Munroe – former chair of the Department of Chemistry, discoverer of the Munroe effect
Stanton J. Peelle – former Congressman from Indiana and chief justice of the United States Court of Claims, former professor of law
Randall R. Rader – former law professor, current federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
Walter Reed – medical school instructor, leading disease researcher and physician
James N. Rosenau – former president of the International Studies Association
Pedro Rossello – professor of global health, former governor of Puerto Rico
Howard Sachar – Jewish historian
Dr. Thomas Sewall – anatomist and founding member of medical department
Lee Sigelman – former editor of the American Political Science Review
Peter Plympton Smith – former Congressman from Vermont, former Dean of the Graduate School of Education and Human Development
John W. Snow – former United States Secretary of the Treasury, former professor of law, as well as graduate
Stephen Solarz – former congressman from New York
William Strong – former Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
Edward Teller (1935–1941) – nuclear physicist and father of the hydrogen bomb
Willis Van Devanter – former Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
Vincent du Vigneaud – biochemist who headed the Biochemistry Department at the George Washington University School of Medicine, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1955
Lowell P. Weicker Jr. – former U.S. senator from Connecticut and former professor of law
Robert Work – Undersecretary of the Navy
Young-Key Kim-Renaud – first female president of the International Circle of Korean Linguistics
Ronald H. Spector – military historian
Martin King Whyte – sociology professor
Henry Farrell – political scientist

Board of trustees

John Quincy Adams – former president of the United States, former member
Burgiss Allison – Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives, original member
Alexander Graham Bell – inventor, former member
Obadiah B. Brown – Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives, original member
Jacob Burns – alumnus, former member
Bennett Champ Clark – alumnus, former U.S. senator, former member
Spencer Houghton Cone – Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives, original member
William Wilson Corcoran – former
Phil Graham – former co-owner of The Washington Post, former member
Ulysses S. Grant – former president of the United States, honorary former member
Ulysses S. Grant III – major general in the United States Army, grandson of President of the United States Ulysses S. Grant, former university vice president and trustee
Melville Bell Grosvenor – former president of the National Geographic Society and editor of National Geographic magazine, former member
Eric Holder – Attorney General of the United States, former member
J. Edgar Hoover – alumnus, first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, former member
Daniel Inouye – alumnus, U.S. senator, former member
Amos Kendall – former United States Postmaster General, former president of the board
David M. Kennedy – alumnus, former United States Secretary of Treasury, former member
Melvin R. Laird – former United States Secretary of Defense, former member
Ted Lerner – alumnus, billionaire developer and owner of the Washington Nationals, former member
Randy Levine – alumnus, President of the New York Yankees, current member
Charles Taylor Manatt – alumnus, former ambassador to the Dominican Republic, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, former chairman of the board
Josiah Meigs – original member
Return J. Meigs Jr. – former governor of Ohio, former US senator, original member
Luther Rice – original member
Sharon Percy Rockefeller – wife of U.S. senator Jay Rockefeller, former member
Thomas Sewall – original member and professor
Robert H. Smith – former member
Lewis Strauss – former United States Secretary of Commerce, former member
Margaret Truman – alumna, daughter of United States President Harry Truman, former member
John Warner – former U.S. senator, former member
Mark Warner – alumnus, U.S. senator, former member

Presidents

Notes

↑ "University Traditions & Spirit". The George Washington University Student & Academic Support Services. Archived from the original on 2010-06-16. Retrieved 2010-08-04.
↑ "Full-Time Faculty by School, Gender, and Ethnicity". Office of Institutional Research & Planning, the George Washington University. Retrieved 2009-06-22.
↑ "Sandiaga Uno receives 'Distinguished Research Professor in Residence' title". 28 October 2016. Retrieved 2018-01-27.
↑ Schneider, Tal (2025-02-07). "The man with the plan: DC prof sent Trump study on Gaza relocation, development in July". The Times of Israel. ISSN 0040-7909. Retrieved 2026-07-21.
↑ GW Law School - Faculty: Clarence Thomas
↑ "Ami Zota". Milken Institute School of Public Health. George Washington University. Archived from the original on 2019-06-21. Retrieved 2018-08-10.
↑ Gallery of Birth Hoaxes

External links

38°54′03″N 77°02′50″W / 38.900750°N 77.047100°W / 38.900750; -77.047100

[1] "University Traditions & Spirit". The George Washington University Student & Academic Support Services. Archived from the original on 2010-06-16. Retrieved 2010-08-04.

[Faculty_Statistics-2] "Full-Time Faculty by School, Gender, and Ethnicity". Office of Institutional Research & Planning, the George Washington University. Retrieved 2009-06-22.

[3] "Sandiaga Uno receives 'Distinguished Research Professor in Residence' title". 28 October 2016. Retrieved 2018-01-27.

[4] Schneider, Tal (2025-02-07). "The man with the plan: DC prof sent Trump study on Gaza relocation, development in July". The Times of Israel. ISSN 0040-7909. Retrieved 2026-07-21.

[5] GW Law School - Faculty: Clarence Thomas

[6] "Ami Zota". Milken Institute School of Public Health. George Washington University. Archived from the original on 2019-06-21. Retrieved 2018-08-10.

[7] Gallery of Birth Hoaxes

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